Chapter 24
Downwards
This year brought the retiring of one of our old colleagues, who had been the company’s representative in Hungarian-Soviet Friendship Society. Being for years his helper in this field I have been named his successor. Many times I had to go to events together with the general manager. I began to feel a dislike in him and for months it took a corner of my mind, until I heard a gossip and I could guess its reason.
I have mentioned, when I wrote about the restructuring of the company, the special way authority in the company has been handled. One of the specialties was a vast collusion among management members themselves and leaders of the social and party organizations. One of them was the woman colleague of mine organizing excursions. It was she who could turn the general manager against me by her extreme envy.
Chance became her ally, too. In January 1987 I have been taking part in a bilateral Comecon meeting on machine tools in Sofia. The same place and time has been selected for another multinational assembly, where partners were represented by managers of the involved companies. Our general manager was there, too. But not alone, he took his secretary – you would not have fought for that woman – with him. It was rumoured for a time that they had also a private connection. By chance I met them in the hotel and that encounter has not seemed pleasant for him. This event helped my opportunities further to deteriorate.
During the year 1986 I could take my holiday as I wanted only with some difficulty as my job made me greatly indispensable. Although I do not have a high opinion about indispensable people, I could not help becoming that myself sometimes.
At last we went together with my wife and our son to spend a fortnight in a trade union recreation home in Sopron, a town on the western border. Long walks, historic sites, a great quantity of Italian ice-cream and the possibility to rest only and do nothing brought us again together.
My activity has earned me respect among those who actually did the work. Even my boss, our deputy general manager for sales, appreciated me in spite of his frustration, and he has always found me with any tasks hard to do. At the same time the head of our company himself and people in his close circle did not have me with pleasure around. As if something had been in me to be afraid of.
I can evaluate it now as paradox behaviour of humans for psychological reasons. Those who hurt you will hate you. Those who help you will like you. Those who see a better one than themselves, while he is situated lower than them, will be afraid of him. It is in no connection with real dangers they should be afraid of. That unstable equilibrium always finds its way, when top is occupied by less valuable and the support has to come from more valuable people. You can observe it in the final stage of dictatorships. It is similar as icebergs in nature. As melting makes their bottoms unsupportive, equilibrium becomes unstable.
At the beginning of 1987 this double evaluation of mine, need for the value of my activity and un-necessity because of fixed ideas in some heads, led to my transfer from the export department to the service department, my job as a sales engineer has changed into service executive. I had to retain my other assignments, as my role in the automotive society, care for the foundry, but brake units would belong to factories directly since that time.
Partly I have contributed to this transfer myself. During my trips to Poland the previous year our representative disclosed me his plans to finish his mission in a year or two. When I said I would be keen to succeed him, he promised me his support. An interview with our deputy general manager for sales seemed positive. He also promised his support. Now my transfer was presented as a natural step for my mission abroad.
With this transfer my place in the hierarchy of the company has been changed completely. From the main flow of products I have been placed into a backwater. There were no talks with domestic or foreign partners, no trips abroad, only slave work, fulfilling urgent needs in spare parts, units or mechanics for repairs of our products, sold abroad. Instead of sales executives and their bosses my partners became representatives of our own service offices. And there were no ordinary cases, only urgent ones and more urgent ones.
My direct boss was a very simple man, former chief of our service unit in West-Germany. He spoke German well, but no other languages – I spoke 3 perfectly, plus French in a moderate level –, and could take no responsibility on himself, he went every time to our deputy general manager for decision. He was shortly before retirement – that time the last five years before retirement limit was called "protected age” – and his future has been safe. For this reason we could cooperate excellently. His wife was replacing temporarily the secretary of our boss being on leave after childbirth.
The alleged goal of my stay on that department was widely known. At the beginning nobody guessed the true reason. My relationship to my direct colleagues was excellent, I needed them first for details I had not learned yet, they needed me all the time for my language skills.
Widest field within my job has been represented by sending spare parts and repair materials to service offices abroad. Sometimes it has not been necessary, as service chiefs visited us frequently and could take it with them. I soon acquired the necessary detailed knowledge and all went well.
The other field has been a very sensitive question, to send service specialist to countries, where either our service office had very few people – or nobody beside the chief – or there were peaks in repair work and troubles had to be eliminated quickly.
There were customers in countries, where servicing crew has been trained by us, but, when more serious faults have been found, the customer either called our specialist to the spot on his own expense, or, when the trouble proved to be our fault, we spent the specialist free. Most overloaded territory of that kind has been China. It has also been one of the nails in the coffin of our company.
A barter agreement created from our part by an incompetent person, involved import of traditional lathes from there and export of NC machine tools by us. No great mind is necessary to imagine the catch in the agreement from the side of our guarantee and after-sales service obligations, compared to those of the partner.
Service specialists have mainly been production engineers from the factory where the product has been manufactured. There were other cases, when either the management of the factory did not allow their people to be sent to far-away countries, because it would have set back production, or there were special troubles of outside units. Then I sent employees of other companies.
This has not happened often, but there was an electrician for the faults of CNC controlling units, who has been constantly on route. At last we had to lay him off for a while, as his wife threatened us with a legal process. Ernest was a unique man, friendly, clever, but no boss-type. He did his work excellently, but even his routes had to be arranged, he was no talent for solving his own problems. His China-trips in Manchuria during floods have been an everlasting topic for his narratives.
During that year the parliament of our country has passed its first Tax Law after the war. Most people were involved by income tax rules in it. The second half of the year was a period for companies to calculate employees’ salaries for the next year, so as no one had had any loss coming from this law. Net income in the next year would have to be equal with gross income in the present year. It goes without saying, there were other modifications, too. Difference between salaries of bosses and those of ordinary employees would grow not only because of the Tax Law. I remember one day queuing up for our envelopes at the cashier. All had to sign on a list. Someone said:
”Who is that one with such an enormous sum to get?”
"Oh, it may be the ,carry forward’ item”, said someone in the queue.
Well, I observed it, it has been one man’s salary, one of the managers.
Towards the end of the year gossips began to go around that troubles of the company on different markets with products sold on credit, as well as with export items, returned by the American customer would result in losses and restructuring. Our management behaved on the opposite way as it was expected. Instead of punishing insane practice, regulations on stock distribution has been loosened, making multiple contracts on the same item possible. "Flood is behind us”, said Louis XV and something similar happened with our company. Even a new American sales office has been established. Its chief became my room-mate from Moscow, 1982.
That year we did not participate on the Meehanite conference for stupidity and envy. The foundry manager, when he got the invitation, sent it to us and, as it came to one of the managers, not involved in the case, he laid it into his pending file. I got it too late to arrange the trip. Anyway, I agreed with our partners in England that for the next year’s conference, planned exceptionally in May instead of September, they would send invitation directly on my name.
Shortly before the end of the year I got information about postponement of our Warsaw representative’s succession. That decision has been supported by the argument that there was no sense in sending a new specialist on the place in that instable situation and risking his recall in a short time. My direct interview with the general manager has not turned out better.
There would have been a spare chance for me, the Moscow office. A married couple, both engineers, had been there for five years. The wife was the same girl, with whom I had been twice in the Soviet Union before my African mission. My selection for that job has been undercut by my only competitor, who had studied in the SU years before. He had the backing of the general manager and it was more than enough. That time I did not know, but for me this rejection has been advantageous.
It became my new hobby to follow up employment ads in the economic weekly. There were a lot of them, but either they were pro-forma ads or my data have not been suitable. I began to realize the difficulty of being the proper person on the proper place at the right time. Chance has helped me again.
I was returning from somewhere I had to visit on business in the city, when I met an old acquaintance on the tram. He had been my fellow-student in the technical university and he had changed so much I would not have recognized him, but he did it with me. We began to talk and Anthony told me he was protocol department head at the national long haul company. I told him where I worked and mentioned my recent problems. He gave me his visiting card and said to come to him with a curriculum vitae. He did not elaborate.
I called him the next week and went to him. He apologized, the post, to which he had wanted to choose me had been filled in by his boss with a younger woman. But he promised me to forward my documents to the personnel manager.
I left with no hope. To my surprise in a week I got a message to call someone back. When I did, it was an executive from the long haul company’s personnel division and he wanted to see me about a job. It was our first meeting with John, but he would be my protector till his retirement.
He said first, he remembered my name from years ago, when a woman with my wife’s name had called him and wanted to offer capacities of a man freshly returned from Africa. I realized with surprise, that my wife had mentioned me her phone call, but the answer had been negative.
"Well”, said John, "that time enrolment of new employees was stopped.”
I asked him, what he could offer me.
"There are two jobs, both for engineer-economists”, he said, "it will be up to you to decide, which one you choose.” One of the jobs, he said me, was that of a technical purchaser. It would be on the technical promotion department under the technical manager. That bunch of people prepared tenders for new trucks and trailers, received replies from competitors and decided about all technical details of the fleet.
"There is a fierce competition among those people”, he informed me. "They would kill each other.”
"I had enough of that lately”, I said, "although the work is for my taste, I even did it in Africa. What is the other vacancy?”
"Oh, it is complicated.” He was confused, how to tell me details.
"Is it risky?”
"No”, he said, "only I have to tell the truth, the boss on that department is a woman.”
"What kind of a woman?”
"If you take my judgement, she is quite another case as it is with female bosses generally.”
He told me, she had been company representative in Moscow for five years. She had returned two years before and had been deputy at the same place, where she was then department head. She had been promoted only two months before.
I would not take willingly a job on the technical promotion department. Later I would be assured in my decision by experiences with those colleagues. As for the other, I thought I would try it. I was given her phone number. As soon as I could I called her. She accepted me and we had a long talk.
"I was very inquisitive already”, she said, when we met in her office, "I would not believe your CV with all those data.”
"Oh”, I said, "everything could not be put into that short list, I did more than that.”
She collected all important points in her short briefing about tasks to be done. She headed the coordination department, a technical-economical group of consultants for the assistance of the technical manager in his decisions. She took over this unit two months before, but was working in it for two years, since her return from the Moscow office. In the course of that conversation we agreed that I would come to work with her and also in the date of my transfer and in salary as well.
As soon as I could, I went to my boss to announce him these news and ask him to let me leave the company by mutual consent. He looked relieved. It strengthened my impression that he appreciated me and did not dislike me, only he had been frustrated to find somebody as tough as himself. He promised me to inform the general manager and warned me not to do it myself. Also he found my wish about mutual consent quite natural.
When I came out of his office, I was much relieved myself, only I knew I was almost seven years late in my orbit modification. Decision has been made and I hoped my new place could not be worse than something with this state company mismanaged in favour of its top-layer people.